ToI sub editor’s wrong take on Brahmaputra answered.

A few days ago, I was directed by a friend towards a blog written by a journalist associated with an esteemed media house. You can read the original blog here.

Anyways, most of the blog was a sketch about Lachit Barphukan, gleaned from information easily available on Wikipedia. My problem was with the slant of the blog and in particular with following paragraph :

And I quote verbatim —

“On social media, people gleefully shared extracts of a recent novel on him that stresses on the cover itself that he was “an Assamese contemporary of Chhatrapati Shivaji”. Of course, the people didn’t realise that this approach is inherently problematic as it invites the reader to view the Ahom general through the same distorting prism of Shivaji. Lachit didn’t fight the Mughals with the idea of a Hindu Pad Padshahi in mind. Nor did he invade Mughal territory to loot and plunder like Shivaji. To equate Lachit with Shivaji is to deny the former his unique place in the history of India.This faulty understanding of Lachit is also aided, in a large way, by some insecure Assamese who rightly perceive that their hero has been ignored for long, but press the wrong buttons to seek remedy. They are elated when they see or hear somebody outside their region appreciating their hero and slamming the “pseudo-secular” syllabi of schools and colleges for lionising the Mughals and writing out Lachit—the implication of the term “pseudo-secular” escapes their notice, though. It also escapes their notice that some sections with vested interests have been trying to transform a medieval kingdom’s fight against an imperialist power into a Hindu kingdom’s fight against a Muslim empire, ignoring the fact that there were many Muslims in the Ahom army, including commanders like Bagh Hazarika, who are even today remembered in Assam as heroes.”

Unquote .

Well , the book in question is my book “ Brahmaputra – The Story of Lachit Barphukan, Assamese contemporary of Chhatrapati Shivaji . The said work was written by me and published via Shree Vyankatesh Prakashan in September 2015.